The Nation is back under my control. Yahoo was actually fairly helpful. I called their Small Business/Domains 1-800 number, got right to a person, explained what was going on and about 20 minutes later it was back under my account. I changed the DNS servers, locked the domain and now we just wait for it to propagate across the interwebs. Not that there’s anything there to see since I had to wipe the whole directory, but it’s the principal of the thing.
Anyway, I hope everyone’s turkey day was good. I’m still full 24 hours later, and the History chanel is making me sleepy. I think I might just nap until Monday.
Well, with a little help from JTN, no help whatsoever from my web host and a little digging, I figured out what was going on. Some Russian script kiddies were injecting PHP files laden with proxies and redirects into my site in nearly every single directory, including WordPress. Since the melicious files were named things like “admin.php”, “config.php”, etc, it screwed up my WordPress install when it overwrote the normal files with the same names.
My host basically told me it was my own fault for running an insecure PHP application (wordpress) and that I’d just have to clean up the mess myself.
I’m typically very careful with my permissions and settings, so I’m still trying to work out how they got in, again with no help from my host. Luckily I had a nearly complete WordPress backup (which you’re seeing now) so I’m OK in terms of data loss. I’m still pretty pissed about it, but there’s not much I can do except try and prevent it in the future.
Also, SavvyNation is gone. That’s the more pressing of the two problems. My DNS settings were changed and it’s now pointing to a parked Yahoo page. I’ve sent multiple emails to my host and haven’t gotten a response yet. The owner/admin information is still mine, but the DNS servers are changed. I don’t know what the point of that would be. I would figure if someone is trying to steal or hijack the page, they’d just take the whole thing. Why change the DNS to Yahoo and leave everything else the same? It’s really starting to piss me off that I can’t get a hold of anyone at my host either. I realize it’s the day before Thanksgiving, but seriously, if someone steals my domain because someone took today off, there will be death.
So, to you dickless vodka soaked fucks in Russia, I hope you freeze to death you fucking sacks of sub-human garbage. Rot in your fucking fur hats. Douche-Nozzles.
Seems that some douchlord decided to trash this website, the wordpress install as well as the same for SavvyNation. Various files were CHMOD’ed to 777, the owners changed to “99” (whatever that means) and then the htaccess files were changed so I couldn’t get back in. Luckily I have a backup for this domain. SavvyNation isn’t as lucky and for some reason, it’s redirecting to a domain parking service. I checked with my host as well as registrar and nothing was changed there, so I’m at a loss as to why its redirecting. I’m not pleased. I’ll get it straitened out but it’s not something I wanted to deal with today. I’ll let everyone know when everything is back to normal.
Management of time is crucial during the busy holiday gaming season. So much so that it’s nearly an art form. A constant war must be waged between wallet, free time and the game of choice. Rarely a restructuing of events occures. Most major decisions regarding purchases have been made long before now. This year unfortunatly, is a little different.
In previous seasons, developers have released games for the holidays in close proximity to each other but not on top of each other. For example, last years mega hits Call of Duty 4 and Assasins Creed hit in November and December respectively. That gave me time to play both.
This year, apparently the gaming gods have seen it nessisary to launch every major title in Novemeber, save a couple for October who were in turn released on top of themselves. So, we’ve already seen Fable 2, Fallout 3, FarCry 2 and DeadSpace, all within a week. Those are already hard choices I’ve had to make. I’d love to try all of them. This week we get Gears of War 2, quickly followed by Call of Duty, Mirror’s Edge, Need for Speed, Tomb Raider, Left 4 Dead, 2 different snowboarding games AND Prince of Persia at the end of the month. Then, nothing. A completely blank December.
I have to admit, I’m a little confused by that. Nothing right before Christmas? No one saved a big release for the “after Thanksgiving” shopping season? Really?
Does that seem odd to anyone else?
Either way, I’ve made my choices and changed one of them significantly. After playing the new Call of Duty beta and being very underwhelmed by it, I’ve decided to leave that for an after Christmas sale purchase. I had very high hopes for it but it seems little more than a COD4 mod with less impressive weapons and slower game play. I’m also very much done with the WWII genre, at least for the moment. Need for Speed and Mirror’s Edge will also get the axe, but not for a lack of effort. The Mirror’s Edge demo was interesting and proved it a valid concept. Alternatively, I think I’m going to pick up Gears this week in their place. Something I was going to wait until December to get. It’s not that I’m expecting it to be great, but it’ll pass the time until Left 4 Dead, my true choice for the season. Then, my next big purchase won’t be until Skate 2 in January. Everything else will have to be picked up later, probably while on sale. It’s not that I don’t want them, but seriously, how would I find the time to play something like Fallout if I haven’t finished Fable 2 yet and I’ll be battling zombie hordes inside of two weeks. That’s a very small window to squeeze 80+ hours of RPG into.
Anyway, it’s not like it matters. Everyone has their own list. What are you guys excited for? What will you be playing between now and the holidays?
I was going to write thing long post about how I can’t vote because I moved after the registration deadline and how that wasn’t fair and all this crap, but that would mostly be a lie.
I would have voted, but it wouldn’t have meant anything. I probably would have voted for Obama, or written in Ron Paul, or maybe even Jon Stewart.
Despite my previous dissertations to the contrary, I’m not adverse to the political process. It’s just that I don’t like either candidate, or the electoral college system, or democrats, or republicans, or those freakin’ third party nut jobs. Actually, come to think of it, in the three elections I’ve been eligible to vote in, I’ve picked the “lesser of two evils” and never really liked ANY candidate.
That’s wrong of me to simply vote for someone because I like the other guy less.
I realize that you can’t always agree with someone all of the time, nor should you. That stifles healthy dialog and leads to complete polarization. But for me to vote for someone, with a clear conscience, I feel I at least need 50%. And the problem with politicians is that they’re 100% full of crap.
In this election cycle, there’s been a lot of talk about people like Joe. Average Joe (and I’m not going to use that phrase) who gets tossed around like a piece of meat by both parties. Each candidate tries so very hard to show that the other guy will screw working class Americans and that their plan/party/ideas won’t. The main problem is that each candidate hasn’t been a “working class American” for years, if ever. They’re completely out of touch and simply don’t give a damn.
You have to be a life long politician before you can get the backing of your party, and you need the backing of your party to run for president. It’s as simple as that.
You can’t change the system from outside the system and once you’re in the system you have to play ball for long enough to get your shot that by the time you get there you’ve forgotten why you started in the first place.
They only person I want to vote for is a person who goes out on Saturday nights, goes to a sports bar to have a beer and watch the game, watches football on Sunday AND Monday, grills for their neighborhood block parties, owns a margarita machine, drives a pickup, owns a gun, and has a crappy job just like the rest of us.
You know who I would vote for? These guys.
I doubt I’ll ever run for office, I joke about that from time to time, but in all seriousness we need a completely average, normal person to be president. We don’t need politicians, we don’t need pundits, we don’t need people on either “wing”. We need someone who can look at a situation or an issue and not have any affiliation, motivations, or bias one way or the other. We need someone who’s not afraid to invite foreign leaders over and either shake their hand or punch them in the nuts.
The fire fighter commercial illustrates that point. Do we want clean water? Yeah. Do we want better roads? Yeah. Then why do we keep electing people who are so deep in the political system they can’t get the basics right.
I admit, there are millions of issues that the president has to face. War, peace, financial trouble, education, environment, transportation, energy, foreign policies, trade, etc. That’s a lot on one plate. But no one since Kennedy has put the country on the path to a particular goal. Everyone says they want to change this, improve that. Then they put together huge bills that do nothing or regulate things to the most minute detail with little change.
I want someone to stand up to stand up and say THIS, this is what we’re doing for the next four years. THIS is my focus. Fill in the blank with a major issue. In the next four years I want flying cars. In the next four years I want all American’s out of debt. In the next four years I want to totally eliminate fossil fuel emissions.
Not since the space race have we as a country been motivated to better ourselves. That is what I want to vote for. A better America. I’ll vote for “change”, but I want to vote for “purpose”.
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